Palestinian and Israeli Leaders to Meet Next Week, as Tensions Remain High

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: May 30, 2007

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, will meet next week, their offices said Tuesday, in a continuation of a Washington-sponsored dialogue that will inevitably focus on another round of Israeli-Palestinian warfare.

There has been speculation that Mr. Olmert may travel to Jericho, among the more placid of occupied West Bank cities, as a symbolic gesture to Palestinian pride, but there was no confirmation of the meeting's location.

In March, the men promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that they would meet every two weeks to discuss ''a political horizon'' for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. They had met only once, on April 15, before a fierce new round of intra-Palestinian fighting in Gaza segued into a new barrage of rockets from Gaza into Israel, joined this time by Hamas, which has drawn the Israelis into a new round of airstrikes.

Mr. Abbas is trying to persuade Palestinian factions to halt the rocket fire from Gaza and work toward a new cease-fire with Israel that would extend to the West Bank. He hopes to present a truce proposal to Mr. Olmert, who has indicated that he will demand a halt to the attacks on Israel but that he will not promise anything in return.

''We have no intention of reaching any kind of settlement, either with Hamas or with Islamic Jihad,'' Mr. Olmert said Tuesday in Parliament. ''We will hit them and continue to hit them.'' But he also said that he intended to speak to the people of Gaza, ''to explain to them that first and foremost they are the victims of the fanaticism of a few within them.''

Israeli officials insisted that he would not discuss with Mr. Abbas the so-called final-status issues of borders, refugees and the fate of Jerusalem, but only ''a political horizon, meaning the composition of a future Palestinian state,'' according to David Baker, an Olmert spokesman.

That is not precisely what Ms. Rice has in mind, according to worried American Jewish leaders who have spoken to her recently. They say she wants to give the Palestinians a clear idea of an attractive future so that political concessions seem worth making. They say she is using the metaphor of ''a beautiful house'' to describe what she wants Israel to offer the Palestinians.

The Israeli crackdown continued Tuesday, with an airstrike on a Hamas training base in Gaza, a raid by Israeli troops into southern Gaza to arrest Hamas fighters, two of whom were killed in a shootout, and the arrest in the West Bank of a Palestinian legislator from Fatah.

The legislator, Jamal Tirawi, 41, is also a leader of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service in Nablus. Israel said he was involved in directing terrorist attacks, including one in Tel Aviv in March 2002 that killed an Israeli woman and injured 29 others. The Israelis arrested three other men in Nablus involved with Mr. Tirawi and Fatah.

The Israelis also raided Ramallah on Tuesday to arrest Omar Abdel-Halim, a member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. He was killed in a shootout in which four Palestinians were wounded. Near Jenin, Israeli soldiers killed Muhammad Marai, who announced last week the formation of a new Fatah militant offshoot, the Abu Amar Brigade.

Also on Tuesday, three members of Islamic Jihad died when a bomb they were making exploded in Gaza City. Israel denied any involvement in their deaths.

[An Israeli air attack early Wednesday on a militant group firing rockets at Israel from northern Gaza killed two men, The Associated Press reported, citing Palestinian security officials. Hamas radio said the two belonged to its military wing.]

In Israel, political analysts chewed over the Labor Party leadership vote, which ended in a severe repudiation for Amir Peretz, the defense minister and party leader, who ran a poor third. There will be a runoff on June 12 between the front-runners, Ehud Barak, a former prime minister and army chief, who won 36 percent of the vote, and Ami Ayalon, a senior military figure, who won 31 percent. Mr. Peretz had 22 percent.

Mr. Barak, 65, did not reach the 40 percent required for election, and is now scrambling to try to win over Mr. Peretz and his supporters. Mr. Ayalon, 61, a former commando and director of the Shin Bet security agency, co-sponsored a peace initiative with a Palestinian intellectual, Sari Nusseibeh. Mr. Ayalon is widely considered an honest, if monkish, new face in politics. Mr. Barak, who left politics after Ariel Sharon defeated him following the failure of his gamble for peace at the Camp David talks, made money as a consultant.

Mr. Peretz, a trade union leader, wants to be finance minister, a job Mr. Olmert refused to give him in the past. Aides to Mr. Peretz say he is politically more aligned with Mr. Ayalon, but polls show that Mr. Barak would be a stronger candidate in a future general election against Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud.

Mr. Barak says he will serve Mr. Olmert as defense minister and press for early elections; Mr. Ayalon says that if Mr. Olmert is not replaced by his Kadima Party by the fall, he may pull Labor out of the coalition.

In a bizarre episode in southern Israel that captured the country's attention on Tuesday, a wild leopard entered a family's bedroom and tried to eat its pet cat. The leopard, which was apparently weak from malnutrition, was subdued by the father while his children took photos. Both animals survived.

Photos: Palestinians, left, walked on the ruins of a Hamas training base in the southern Gaza Strip hit by an Israeli airstrike yesterday. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, above, is trying to persuade Palestinian factions to halt rocket fire from Gaza and work toward a new cease-fire with Israel that would extend to the West Bank. (Photo by Adel Hana/Associated Press); (Photo by Hatem Omar/MaanImages, via Associated Press)